World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn

Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)

INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”

Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008 

The People of God according to Romans 9-11
An Eastern Christian Approach to the Identity of God’s Beloved Olive Tree 

Dr Daniel Ayuch
University of Balamand, Lebanon

 

PDF version for downloads

 

Being a Christian in the Middle East today is a tough task. Dramatic political changes during the last century have torn Christianity into parties that confound religious and political causes. Some Christians opted for denying the Old Testament; others found it appropriate to fight for an Arab cause or an Arab nation; fewer found the state of Israel an improvement to the Middle East. What really exacerbated the Christian condition in the Middle East was the mass emigration to the (Christian) West of entire families, turning their back on their roots and homeland out of a genuine desire to live in peace and wellbeing.  

One of the major challenges for those Arabic-speaking Christians who still live at home today is to find a way to understand modern Judaism and to take a genuine position towards the state of Israel that does not jeopardize or betray their own principles. Eastern Christians are easily put in the dock by Western scholars who find them “anti-Semitic”, as well as by Moslem scholars who charge them with being “pro-Zionist”. Are we Eastern Christians really anti-Semitic? Do we really sympathize with Zionist movements? One thing is evident: Eastern Christians today more than ever face a critical test. Not only should we avoid offending Muslims in any attempt to open dialogue with Jews, but we must also be wary of being misunderstood by Western Christians because of our coexistence with Islam. We are challenged to bear witness not only to our brothers and sisters in Islam and Judaism but also to the whole church.  

My contribution investigates one of the most delicate questions touching religious coexistence in the Middle East—the notion of election and the status of the Jewish people in Christian theology. This serious question has been raised since the beginnings of Christianity and belongs to the core of the New Testament message. The most prominent text regarding the continuity and discontinuity of God’s election of the Jews is no doubt Romans 9-11. Since the infamous Holocaust and the proclamation of the modern state of Israel, there has been an active discussion amongst Western biblical scholars on Romans 9-11 as defining the role of “Israel” in Christianity.[1]  

Within Romans 9-11, a particular paragraph regarding the election of God’s people has vividly impressed Christianity: Paul’s illustration of the olive tree (Rom. 11:16b-24). Here the apostle illustrates his vision of God’s people by referring to it as an olive tree. He makes use of the common Mediterranean customs of grafting and lopping in order to make his ideas clear and comprehensible to readers who certainly have at least once taken care of this generous and fruitful tree. Since this is Paul’s sharpest and most didactic elucidation of the question, this article will interpret it. 

Paul’s major argument: the scriptures

Almost 40 percent of the text in Romans 9-11 proceeds from Old Testament (OT) citations. These amount to more than 50 percent of the OT quotations in the whole Epistle, and more than 30 percent of the OT quotations in the authentic Pauline writings.[2] This quantitative indicator shows the relevance of the scriptures for Paul’s argument in Romans 9-11.

For Paul, the scriptures are “the foundation of all his assertions”.[3] In Romans, Paul points out that his letter teaches “the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Rom. 1:1-2). Therefore, the whole letter functions as the (only valid) interpretation and explanation of what the scriptures already say concerning a specific subject. This is not a unique case in the New Testament but rather the foundation on which the gospels and epistles were written and canonized as the telos, i.e., the end and the culmination of the scriptures (Rom. 10:4).

In order to point out the thread that runs through the scriptures and to guide their intertextual reading, Paul quotes writings from their three main parts: the law, the prophets and the psalms. Thus, it is not by chance that the three main representatives of the scriptures—Moses for the law (9:15; 10:5.19), Elijah for the prophets (11:2) and David for the psalms (11:9)—are systematically mentioned within Romans 9-11.

Paul mentions as key for his argument the following scriptural figures, listed here by order of appearance in Romans 9-11: Israel as a collective entity; then Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Rebecca, Jacob, and Esau as protagonists of the foundational biblical stories; then the Pharaoh, the nations,[4] and Sodom and Gomorrah as those who ignore God’s plans for humanity; and finally Paul’s tribal ancestor Benjamin, together with Baal, who embodies the main cause of apostasy in the OT.[5]

This high incidence of biblical texts and names is not the only way in which the scriptures are present in Romans 9-11. The whole section functions as a magisterial interpretation of the scriptures and remains embedded in the logic, terminology and phraseology of the scriptures.

The similitude of the olive tree (Rom. 11:16b-24)

Paul, as both a prophet and a wise teacher, uses the power of an illustration to explain the essence of his teaching. This is the way the Bible was written, and it is a well-known method among the Jewish torah teachers when they want to make a difficult idea clear and comprehensible to their audience.[6] In Rom 11:17-24 we come across a mashal, the Hebrew term for a typical oriental speech figure that has been and still is very much in use in modern Arabic under the name of mathal. 

Paul bases his illustration on the well-known principle in arboriculture that every wild tree must be grafted in order to become fruitful. The only difference between the “wild olive tree” (avgrie,laioj) and the “improved olive tree” (kallie,laioj) in Rom 11:24 is that one produces non-edible fruit, i.e., people consider it a barren tree, while the other is generous in giving fruit fit for human consumption. Thus, the key idea in this similitude is not so much being wild or cultivated, in an intellectual or cultural sense, as being unproductive or fruitful in the sense of proliferating life. God has grafted his elected people so that they may become fruitful, making salvation possible for all humankind.

Although Paul chooses the olive tree because it is easy to graft, since its cultivation is widespread all over the Mediterranean, his main reason for choosing it is its scriptural significance. The olive tree represents the people of God as defined by the scriptures. I shall explain the scriptural motif of the tree in general and the olive tree in particular.

The similitude of the tree is a prevalent OT leitmotiv. A handful of prominent texts compare people, especially believers, to trees.[7] One of the most significant comparisons is in the opening of the Psalter where the righteous are “like trees planted by streams of water” (Ps 1:3, and its parallel in Jer. 17:8). Jesus compares human beings to trees bearing good or bad fruit.[8] John the Baptist uses this metaphor as well (Luke 3:8-9). In an interesting quotation from the non-canonical Jewish writings, the chosen one is called “the plant of upright judgment” (1 Enoch 93:5).[9] 

Closer to the Romans text are similitudes by the prophets Isaiah (Is. 5:1-7) and Jeremiah (Jer. 2:21), where the whole “house of Israel” (Is. 5:7) is compared to a vine stock that does not produce the expected fruit, despite God’s devoted care for it.  

With the famous comparison where God calls his people “a green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit” (Jer. 11:16), we reach the clearest of the OT examples that inspired Paul. Jeremiah presents YHWH as the one who has planted the tree and mentions the branches while referring to their destruction for all the evil they have done (Jer. 11:17). In Hosea, the new ideal Israel is compared inter alia with an olive tree: “his beauty (LXX: “his fruitfulness”) shall be like the olive tree.” (Hos. 14:7)[10]

On these biblical foundations, Paul develops his illustration, highlighting the function of each part of the tree: the root( h` r`i,za) in 11:16-18, the sap (h` pio,thj) in 11:17, and the branches (oi` kla,doi) in 11:16-21.

Abraham as the life-giving root

Although in the Septuagint “root” has at least four different connotations besides its literal meaning,[11] almost all interpreters agree that in Rom 11:16-18 it is used to allude to the origins of Israel, i.e., to the patriarchs and particularly to Abraham.[12] This is sustainable above all from texts such as Ezek. 16:3, Is. 11:1, and Hos. 9:16. Ezekiel uses “root” as a synonym for father and mother: “Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin (in LXX: your root) and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite.” For Isaiah, the root is the ancestors of David: “A shoot shall come out from the stump (LXX: the root) of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” For Hosea, the ancestors or “root” of Ephraim are barren because their children have forgotten the Lord: “Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.” These three prophets are a fundamental part of Paul’s argument in Romans 9-11. 

For Paul, the root of the olive tree represents those ancestors who bore faithful witness to the scriptural God, i.e., the fathers of Israel who shall not dry up and are able to bear the branches and provide them with the precious sap. Israel has known among its ancestors many anti-heros and traitors—Esau, Achan or king Manassas, for example—as well as many others who are not mentioned by name or do not figure in the Bible at all.[13] In Paul’s “root”, these people have no place. That is why he says that “not all Israelites truly belong to Israel” and highlights the role of Abraham in the preamble and exposition of his main thesis (Rom. 9:6-9). 

One more argument for identifying the “supporting root” of Rom 11:18 as the holy fathers alone, and not just any Jewish ancestor according to the flesh, is that the roots provide water to the tree. They are in contact with fresh water, which in the Bible always refers to the word of God and his law. “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jer. 17:7-8).[14] In Ezek. 47:1-12 the trees give fruit for food and leaves for healing because they are by the water that flows out of the sanctuary.[15] The roots of God’s people are the ancestors who were in direct contact with God’s word and absorbed it and transformed it into sap so that the whole tree could produce fruit in abundance. The root in Romans 11 is a “holy root”, in direct contact with God: “you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:45).

The word of God feeding the tree

If the root represents the patriarchs and the water they take in alludes to God’s word, what can the “richness” of the tree be, except all the benefits given to Israel from generation to generation? And what benefit can be greater than the holy scriptures that feed whoever trusts in the biblical God? In both Testaments the only thing that supplies Israel with nutrients is the word of God. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). For the author of Sirach, the scriptures are the greatest blessing ever given to humankind, and he commits himself to spread them far away and for ages (Sir. 24:23-34).

Although the Greek term richness (h pio,thj) is a hapax legomenon in the New Testament, it is frequently used in the Septuagint, together with its adjective rich or fat (pi,wn). The Bible speaks rather of the richness or fatness of the earth[16] than of the fatness of plants and trees.[17] “Paul’s overladen genitive construction”[18] in Rom 11:17 does not help to decide whether the fatness belongs to root or to earth. Most probably this was deliberate, so that it points to the unity of the tree with the richness of the earth. This would affirm that Israel’s richness is not its own, but given by God alone.

Romans 9-11 has a decisive paragraph dedicated to the word of God as the source of life and salvation (Rom 10:1-21). By interpreting Deuteronomy 30:14 and the whole paragraph that contains this verse, Paul expounds in the best rabbinic style the scriptural proofs of the proximity of the word and its effectiveness in giving life, i.e., in saving Israel:

“But what does it [the scripture] say? ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.’ That is the word of faith that we proclaim, because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.” (Rom. 10:8-10)

his echoes the promise of salvation given by Moses in the conclusion of the text quoted by Paul:

“If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.” (Deut. 30:16)

Now, these words bring life again only if they are interpreted as Jesus and then Paul did. For Jesus and for Paul, obedience and observance of God’s will are the natural response of faith and they reach their summit by practising the commandment to love God and the neighbour—an attitude that should originate neither in jealousy for the law nor in pride in the ethnic tradition, but should spring from the living faith and the trust in God that burn in the heart.

The fatness of the tree comes from the fat soil[19] provided by God. The word of Jesus that Paul proclaimed to the readers of Romans is the fatness that nourishes them and circulates like sap from their ears to their lips and hearts in order to give them life. This nourishment, the word, would not have reached Jesus or Paul had it not been accepted and transmitted by Abraham and the other ancestors. In other words, Paul’s interpretation of the root and the sap is absolutely scriptural. It is written that the Lord is “the God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob” (Ex 3:6, 15, 16; 4:5). On this Jesus comments, “He is God not of the dead but of the living” (Matt. 22:32). The ancestors are alive in the word of God, in the scriptures that are written not only on scrolls but also in the heart of every believer. Thus, the scriptures teach that to be a child of Abraham does not mean to be his descendant according to the flesh but to believe and obey the God he believed in and obeyed during his whole life. “This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants” (Rom. 9:8). The promise is nothing more than God’s word, which keeps everything and everyone alive.

Branches reaching for life

The branches (oi` kla,doi) are the third, and the most discussed, component of the olive tree. They are mentioned in vv. 11:16, 17, 18, 19, 21. One of Paul’s main points in the similitude is to show the holiness of the branches: “and if the root is holy, then the branches are also holy” (Rom. 11:16b).

The branches that try to live and fructify thanks to the sap of the tree are to be considered as living human beings. Paul explicitly indicates this: “For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you” (Rom 11:21). Greek literature and the Old Testament writings also refer to living people metaphorically as branches.[20]

The branch comparison allows Paul and the reader to make several inferences. Branches are dependent: they depend both on what the gardener might do with them and on the nourishment given by root and trunk. Branches are fragile and perishable: they can easily be lopped, in order to be thrown away or rarely in order to be grafted on a new tree. A third feature of Paul’s branches is their pride in being on the top. Paul knows that the beauty of a tree is depicted by the form and the richness of its branches. It is the branches that manifest the life running inside the tree, in their foliage and especially in their fruit.

All these attributes describe perfectly the struggle for life, and particularly the struggle within the community of believers. While the root and the richness given by the earth are invariable, the branches of the tree may vary from time to time, depending on what the gardener decides. This idea leads to Paul’s main purpose in the similitude, which is to elucidate how the nations form part of the people of God people now.

The olive tree is an OT leitmotiv representing the scriptural Israel, i.e., a people formed by God’s word, existing thanks to God’s permanent care but liable to be cut and burned if God does not see any use for it. With the lopping and grafting, Paul captures graphically the idea that the tree was in need of care and that the gardener intervened at the right time so that it might not be lost.

Lopping is a symbol for the exclusion of weakened members, grafting for the inclusion of foreign members. Linguistically, the Greek text communicates these ideas of exclusion and inclusion through the repetitive use, on the one hand, of the verbs “to break off” (in Greek: evkkla,w) in Rom 11:17, 19, 20 and “to cut off” (in Greek: evkko,ptw) in Rom 11:22,24, and on the other hand, of the verb “to centre in” (evgkentri,zw) in Rom 11:17, 19, 23, 24. The marked presence of the prefixes “ex‑” (from Greek evk-) and “in‑” (from Greek evn-) in these verbs indicates that the text's main message is the individual relationship with the community of God. This is also clearly expressed in the adjective “participant” (in Greek: sugkoinwno.j, Rom: 11:17) that describes the condition of the newly grafted branches, i.e., the Christians that did not know the law.

Paul’s unnatural grafting method

The similitude of the olive tree raises a difficult question that we have not mentioned so far. As gardeners know, it is useless to graft a cultivated tree with a wild shoot. This would not help the tree to be more fruitful. Nevertheless, this is precisely what is done to the olive tree in Rom 11:16b-24. Although some scholars have tried to explain Paul’s way of grafting as a practice known of old,[21] it is highly unlikely that this grafting procedure was seen by Paul as natural. If it were so, he would not have written the famous phrase “contrary to nature” (in Greek: para. fu,sin, Rom 11:24).

There must be another explanation to Paul’s unnatural grafting method. According to the scriptures no human being deserves the grace of salvation. “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” (Rom 11:32)  Both Jews and Greeks are under the yoke of sin, and God has found a wise and unsearchable way to open for them a way to salvation. All are invited although no one deserves.

Neither the old cultivated olive tree nor the new wild shoot is able to produce any good fruit by itself. Both are in the same condition; they are useless and need a change lest, like any fruitless tree, they be cut down. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that God the gardener intervene to make a vital change. God removes the old branches that are fruitless due to their faithlessness, their indifference to the word of God and the patriarchs, and inserts new shoots, hoping they will bloom and be fruitful.

The initiative taken by the gardener is unexpected and generous. It is an act of mercy, a very frequent concept in Romans 9-11 that has the special connotation of free election. “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Rom 9:15 // Ex 33:19) Who would say that such an ancestral and strong tree planted in a rich and fat soil was exposed to death because of its stubborn branches that refuse to drink the sap offered to them for free? Was God supposed to give up because of them? Certainly not! “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people’, and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved’.” (Rom. 9:25 // Hosea 2:25) For Paul, this means that God knew how to manage this critical situation in order to rescue not only a part of his tree, but also some branches from outside the fence. In addition, Paul is confident that the jealousy of the cultivated branches that have been cut off will lead them to be grafted back.

To put it in a more academic way, the election of God’s people is never based on the aptitude and capability of the elected, but simply on mercy. According to Paul’s way of reading the scriptures, if God gives us a chance to be grafted into his community, we had better accept it because the opportunity may not come again.

Conclusion

In interpreting Paul’s similitude of the olive three, the present article approached the delicate notion of election from a different perspective and in a more functional way. Paul as both a prophet and a wise teacher uses the power of an illustration to explain the essence of his teaching. This is the way the Bible was written and a well-known method among the Jewish Torah teachers when they want to make a difficult idea clear and comprehensible to the audience.

According to Paul’s similitude there is only one beloved olive tree, and only God knows who is part of it. After Jesus Christ the only way to be part of the tree is to confess him as Lord and saviour. Baptism is, therefore, the way to be grafted into the tree of life. Before Jesus, Jews had always been part of the tree. This means that every true believer before Jesus Christ is an essential part of this unique tree, just as much as every Jew who has listened to the message of the Christ and become a member of the new community (‘atsarah in Hebrew) of Pentecost (‘ansarah in Arabic) as narrated in Acts 2. Afterwards the apostles as heads and chiefs of this community have preached the gospel to the Jews first, and then to the nations all over the oikoumene. Whoever accepted their message amongst the Jews has renewed the possibility of belonging to the good old tree, and whoever refused it has refused the Christ and therefore has been cut off the tree, creating the necessity of being grafted back into their natural root. Moreover, it is expected that some day this will happen for their salvation.